Just because the US Air Force wants to arm itself with deadly combat rayguns doesn't mean it's about to skimp on safety. No sir.
With great power (say, a weapons grade 100 kilowatt blaster cannon) comes great responsibility (a 32-page safety manual).
A recently published Air Force Instruction paper has established a safety …

Re: Aircraft Mounted Particle Accelrators....

There was a programme (I'm not sure if this was a U.S Navy or U.S Airforce Program) in the 1980's codenamed White Horse, which would have used 2 co-axial particle accelerators (1 accelerating Protons & the other Electrons) to essentally fire Hydrogen atoms, abeit at speeds close to light at a fast moving target... If they are intending to put such a device on a aircraft, then could it be a sucessor to the ABL (Airborne Laser) programme, due to enter service in the next few years...?

The original codename for said program, Sipapu, had to be changed after protests from the Native American community,as it meant Sacred Fire, in a Amerindian dialect...

Mine's a suit of Powered Armour, with the optional Particle Cannon on a shoulder mount...

Re: Only 32 pages

It's one of them natural bureaucracy laws - simple tools need longer instructions because they have to be detailed down to very basic operations. On the other hand a complex tool will have more logic built-in and therefore need only a few high-level hints to work. Thus, an infinitely complex tool would not need any instruction manual at all, while an infinitely long instruction manual will get the job done without any tool.

"...potential fratricide." ????!!!!

Hmmm, they must know more than we thought

Or perhaps Walter Mitty is now at the helm of US defence. The most interesting bit is `terminating a ray at it's destination. Somebody is going to have to fire up Einstein and have a word about the propagation of an electromagnetic wave front, he'll have to rewrite it, unless there is a plan to provide the target with a mirror or some kind of death ray absorbing material. Otherwise people, houses, trees and large planets such as the earth can provide a useful backstop to such a beam.

At critical moments, necessity for exposure to DEWs presumably covers friendly fire, `oops sorry that was a critical moment and in my enthusiasm for wiping out the enemy, I have just vapourised several companies of allied combat troops and our President who was visiting them¨.

It is, however, good to know that the DOD ( short for doddery?) has put a great deal of thought into the safe operation of such things as DEWs, 32 pages Eh?

Warning label

particle weapons

when I worked at a rather large physics lab, making antimatter routinely, we *did* have a visit from besuited serious 'merkins. This is all many many years ago! The discussion was briefly about annihilation, and how many Pbars would fit in a bottle, and how big the bang would be. I think we convinced them that it would take many many many large physics labs in parallel, and a long time, and I certainly wouldn't want to be anywhere near the magnetic confinement bottle.

As for particle beams - they're a doddle when space based as an active denial system (OCS) counter satellite communication system - , the few times I did pass a 40MeV Proton beam through normal air, I reckon it got around an inch before interacting fully. A free space (air) neutron beam might get some metres. There's always laser plasma/paritcle hybrid beams I suppose; A neutrino beam could go rather further, but wouldn't be noticed!

The mil could always accelerate iron or gold or U238 nucleii, they do qualify as corpuscular matter, might need a hand-held wakefield linac?? which would still need almost as big a battery as the pbar mag confinement.

Can I get that on a T-Shirt??

It's for everything

It's likely a pretty fair summary of all the potential hazards, when you look at the list of weapons covered, and see it includes the non-lethal types. That infamous crowd-cooking microwave contraption could easily put Air Force personnel at risk, with all the potential for reflections, though I really hope the engineers checked for antenna side-lobes.

"terminate the beam at the end of its useful path."

Does that mean they intend to build light sabres?

What else could be meant by "terminating" a beam at the "end of its useful path"? Either it gets absorbed by the target, or it travels through the target. How do they want to "terminate" it??? Or did I miss something in physics class? (admittedly, it's been a while...)

(completely off topic: what happened to the additional icons that were promised a while ago?)

USAF

as a member of the USAF I assure you that compliance with every AFI is mandatory, believe me I know. And 32 pages for a death ray isn't bad considering the AFI that outlines how to wear our uniforms is about the same.

Re: Death *OR* Vaporisation????

I disagree

"After all, nothing is more embarrassing than leaving your phaser on kill."

According to General Turgidson, nothing is more embarrassing than leaving your phaser on tickle. Separation between professional and private duty, etc ..

"It also wisely instructs that there should be some way to "terminate the beam at the end of its useful path.""

Reasonable demand considering the annoying habit of targets to jump away when shot at (especially if Pfc Butterfinger forget to change from tickle ...). But beam termination can be awfully tricky once it's beyond the event horizon, so better call ahead.

warnings from GLaDOS

Getting in the way...

It takes a fair bit of bad timing to step in the way during the firing of a projectile / rocket / bullet, but these beam weapons need to be trained on the target for several seconds to get the desired effect. I'm just imagining a plane flying through the beam having it's wing nicely softened enough to cause it to snap off.